Biography: Salvador Dali

admin — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:44:31 +0000

Salvador Dali described himself and his lifestyle with these words: “The only difference between me and a madman is the fact that I am not mad.” Were it not for the paintings, the books he wrote, the movies he collaborated on and the witnesses of others who observed him at work and at play, we might be tempted to disagree with him.

We might want to say, no, you were mad, else how could you have lived the life you lived. It is not normal for a human being to live insanely in a sane world, or to live sanely in an insane world. Yet, that is precisely what the enigmatic artist known as Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali, born May 11th 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain did.

All of us have seen pictures of his painting of a melting watch and have seen pictures of his other bizarre paintings that looked like photographs. They were not photographs but were meticulously painted works of art celebrating the humdrum of life. If the subject matter had not been contray to nature they could easily have been mistaken for photographs. It was the subject matter of his paintings and his bizarre life style that caused many to question his sanity. It was finally decided that he was not only a genius at what he did, and that of course was getting attention. He had a way of promoting himself that made others sit up and take notice.

He went through painting labels fast and furiously: He sampled Cubism, Futurism, and Metaphysical Painting and finally settled with the one title that is used in identifying his style to this day, surrealism. Surreal painting is painting that depicts a dream life and its subject matter is derived from the deep dark other world of the painter. It’s as if the artist or poet gets glimpses of this other part of their psyche and brings it forward into consciousness where they paste it down on canvases and force a frightened public to take a look. Some of course, do this for shock value and probably make a lot of it up or copy from another, but Dali was an original. His dreams like sequences were his own.

What makes his artwork and his lifestyle different is that apparently his style was genuine. He took art lessons as a young boy. His first drawing lesson was at age ten; at age fourteen he had his first one man show. He attended the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid but did not stay to take the final exam. He thought he knew more than those who were testing him.

In 1928, at the age of twenty-four he first learned of Surrealism. It was in Paris

Looking beyond our physical form for a better understanding

admin — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 09:10:58 +0000

The Metaphysical: Meta is a word meaning beyond. What is there to discover beyond the physical? There is so much there, beyond the physical body (within the depths of the mind) and not all of it is desirable. In fact there is a layer of ignorance within the mind which is completely undesirable.

From birth right through to this very moment you have been accumulating a subconscious past. This past is what you call yourself, your personality, the person you think of as you. This subconscious layering of past conditioning consists of all your aimless and problematic thinking, your attitudes, beliefs and opinions along with everything that you’ve become attached to in existence since you were born to this world. It also consists of all your psychological and emotional pain, misery, suffering and unhappiness. It is all there, within you, hidden in your mind and it thinks that IT is You! But is it?

Beneath the thin layer of mind known as the subconscious lies the unconscious. But what do you know of the unconscious, this vast and infinitely deep realm of your Psyche? Most people know very little of it because most of them are caught up in the subconscious . . . and I have to ask, are you any different?

Your reality, or what you really are, is hidden within the unconscious mind. The secret is to find a way to Transcend, Divine Through and Move Beyond the layer of ignorance, which you call yourself, the personality. In so doing you will re-connect with a greater Reality/Integrity than the self/personality.

How can you move beyond the conditioned mind and into the depths of the unconditioned mind? There is only one “Pure” way to do this, to move beyond the surface of yourself, and that requires you to become an observer of your “self” (self being everything you think you are . . but are not!). You have to separate your intelligent state of “Awareness” from your conditioned thinking mind and the only way to do this is by becoming “The Intelligent Observer” of yourself. You have to partake in a great “experiment”. You have to take on the role of a scientist and become the observer of yourself. You must sit in self-observation, walk in self-observation and “be” in self-observation 24/7. You have to become the silent witness of all that is happening within your own psyche/mind. There is no other way . . . and sooner or later this is what you must do, if you are to become enlightened, liberated and free from discursive thinking and emotional unhappiness, if you

Metaphysical Beliefs » Psyche

Biography: Salvador Dali

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Looking beyond our physical form for a better understanding